


Back In Your Head

by Miss_Mil



Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: Episode: s04e05 Divide and Conquer, Episode: s04e09 Scorched Earth, Episode: s04e10 Beneath the Surface, Episode: s04e12 Tangent, Episode: s04e20 Entity, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-06
Updated: 2015-09-06
Packaged: 2018-04-19 07:02:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,263
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4737140
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Miss_Mil/pseuds/Miss_Mil
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It hovers over them, influencing everything they do but he knows it would be oh so wrong. It's too easy for them to hurt each other. It's too easy for them to die. And it shouldn't be that way. </p><p>Tags to season 4.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Back In Your Head

**Author's Note:**

> Once again I find myself in the situation where I must do pressing Law essays, and this comes out instead. 
> 
> Tag to season 4 with all our favourite Sam and Jack episodes and goodness. 
> 
> Disclaimer: SG-1 is unfortunately not my sand-box.

He had always known it would come out at some stage. Somewhere along the timeline in any reality, eventually they would have to admit it. He had always imagined it in a life or death situation, where one of them was about to die and suddenly the other one would admit their love right as the lights went out. Oh, the cliché of it all. 

Somehow, he never imagines admitting it in front of a room full of people, and half of them are aliens. What the hell, he tells himself. Better than dying. Ironically this time it saves their lives instead of ending them. Somehow that makes it alright. 

But it’s not alright. 

He shouldn’t have to admit his feelings for a certain blonde individual under his command. He shouldn’t have to face it just yet. 

He’s saved when she offers to keep it in the room. Deep down he knows it’s more for herself than him, and she doesn’t want to face it anymore than he does. Bitterly he admits that it’s because she doesn’t want to ruin her projected straight-to-the-top career path for a fling with a wrong-side-of-forty Colonel. 

But he can’t help but wonder what it would be like to be with her. Full-on no doubt, and never ending. Caught up in her youth and passion for all things that make the world move. A whirlwind that he isn’t entirely sure he wants to be swept away with. 

It’s after too many close calls and too many unsaid goodbyes that he indulges himself sometimes. Alone, late at night somewhere on some planet in some area of the galaxy when he has nothing to do but think of her.

In the weeks that follow, nothing really changes. But he feels like he is drowning. It hovers over them, influencing everything they do but he knows it would be oh so wrong. It’s too easy for them to hurt each other. It’s too easy for them to die. 

And it shouldn’t be that way. 

It takes a row boat on an alien lake somewhere far from home on a terraformed planet to realise that maybe it wouldn’t be so bad. But her heart is closed. Forever the soldier and duty comes first. 

He knows why she is scared, a deep-seeded fear that she knows once they start they just won’t stop. He can’t reassure her; he knows it’s true. A few weeks in an underground mine proves just how fast their relationship would progress. And all it takes is an hour of memories returning and the word “sir” to set him straight. 

A few more weeks and he sees it immediately in her eyes the moment they get home from his one-way trip in the death glider. That moment of clarity where she realises this isn’t something she can forget. And all too soon it’s gone, hidden away beneath those blues. Locked away in a box that’s purely Sam and not Major Carter. 

They never speak of the moment he nearly suffocates in space. He knows she blames herself, and he can’t imagine how she felt stuck back on Earth knowing he was moving away from her at a rate faster than she could ever hope to catch him. And there was nothing she could do. 

He finds her hours after he returns back to the safety of Earth, huddled in a corner of her lab where he can practically see the wheels turning in her brain as she ponders, deep in thought. 

“Hey,” he says, his voice ricocheting of the concrete walls. 

She jumps slightly at his voice, looking at him with wide eyes like she was expecting something else entirely. 

Regarding him for a moment, she finally answers. “How are you feeling, Sir?” 

He opts for his safety net; humour. “Oh, you know, a little stiff, little sore but okay.” He attempts a half arsed smile, not sure if she will be receptive or not. “Apparently oxygen deprivation does that to you.”

It was the wrong thing to attempt a joke with, he realises all too late when her face morphs into another look somewhere between horror and downright sadness. He attempts another smile as she stares at him. 

“I’m sorry-”

“Carter,-”

They attempt to fill the silence at the same time. Her mouth shuts as quickly as it opened and he sees her swallow, unsure of what to say. 

He rubs a hand over his tired face, mentally counting the ways he can possibly say to her that he knows all too well what she is going through and that this is so dangerous for them both. 

She gets up out of her chair in a rush, like she has suddenly just decided to do something spontaneous, and the wheeled chair crashes into the wall behind her. He shoves his hands in his pockets quickly to hide the startled jump of his body. 

“Thanks for bringing me back,” he says lightly, and turns as quickly as he can to get out of her lab before they both do something incredibly stupid. 

It’s the gut wrenching ache he tries to ignore whenever he sees her. It follows them though, and he feels like it echoes everything they do. He doesn’t call her ‘Sam’ anymore, and somehow he can’t even bring himself to be near her alone. 

Another few weeks later of hell and it’s all happening too soon, that moment they both dread when one has to make the life ending choice for the other. It’s been one shit of a year for them both and somehow he wonders if this is the universe kicking his arse. Too many moments spent near death and if anything it just proves to them both they cannot be together. 

Ironically, it’s him that pulls the trigger to end her life. He tells himself she was long gone before that moment. But it was still Sam. And he watches numbly as once again they load her limp body onto a trolley to wheel her back to the infirmary. 

This time it was him that ended her life. And it was worse than watching her die on some alien planet in the cold. 

He can’t even think about it, he can’t feel. 

Or is it that he doesn’t want to? 

Before he has to make the second gut-wrenching choice to end her life again, just like that, she is back to him again. She doesn’t say it, but he hears it anyway. The gratitude that he was able to do what they both fear. He can still separate the soldier from the man. And somehow he knows now that he can make that decision if he has to. 

And she knows it would kill him too. 

But they never say it. They can’t. 

The year moves on and they avoid the infirmary for the most part. They avoid a lot of other things too. 

Fate is anything if not cruel. And it’s cruel they have to live side-by-side facing situations that cause them pain. They need each other to survive, to protect each other and to do their job. 

Sometimes he thinks it would be a whole lot easier if she was attracted to Daniel. But she isn’t. 

His sheer panic each time they step through the gate is always going to be there, and he makes a choice to do everything he can to make damn sure they both return through the gate. In any state so long as they are both breathing. 

Because they both know they’d never survive without the other.


End file.
